On Air Media Professionals (C-416/24): Court of Justice Upholds Retroactive Application of the GBER but Rules that State Aid Recovery Would Breach Legal Certainty and Legitimate Expectations
The Court of Justice (CJEU) has issued its judgment in the case On Air Media Professionals (C-416/24) and Different Media (C-417/24), addressing two preliminary references on the interpretation of Article 2(18)(a) of the General Block Exemption Regulation (GBER) and Article 1(1) of Commission Regulation (EU) 2021/452 of 15 March 2021 correcting the Romanian language version of the GBER. The cases also examine how the principles of legitimate expectations and legal certainty apply in the context of State aid granted under the GBER.
The requests were submitted in the context of two Romanian cases concerning the recovery of COVID-19 subsidies allegedly granted unlawfully under the GBER. The disputes arose from a translation error in the Romanian version of Article 2(18) GBER, which defined “undertakings in difficulty” differently from all other EU language versions. The Court ruled that the 2021 correcting regulation applied retroactively, since it merely rectified a linguistic error that had distorted the meaning of the original rule and ensured uniform interpretation of EU law across all official languages.
However, the CJEU found that recovering the aid would breach the principles of legal certainty and legitimate expectations since the companies had relied in good faith on the official Romanian version of the regulation and on Commission-approved aid schemes confirming their eligibility. Therefore, they had a legitimate expectation that the aid was lawful, and the recovery of the aid was deemed unjustified under EU law.
For more information, see the CJEU’s judgment.